Klout Gets Binged

Great news today about our portfolio company Klout: TechCrunch reports that the company is getting a strategic investment from Microsoft and Klout will have a two-way data relationship with the Bing search engine.

This means you’ll see Klout scores in Bing results, and Klout will use Bing data in determining Klout scores. For example, when people search for you in Bing, your Klout score will go up.

The reason Klout was able to get a deal like this done is because they have a lot (a whole lot) of data on people. This data, along with the fact that they remain a neutral party working with all the giants, allows them to create a sort of Page Rank that tells others how influental you are in given areas.

When you forget all the weird perks people get for having a high Klout score and the sometime hilarious errors that the young service sometimes makes in assigning Klout, you can start to see the real power of the service. Big, big data. And useful.

Share this:

Like this:

Related

8 thoughts on “Klout Gets Binged”

Doesn’t this create a false reality? If somebody searches for me on Google – which is arguable more used than Bing, than it means that I “reputation.” But that won’t inflat my Klout score. Only if the partner search engine is used. This might not be a good partnership for the Web.

So one can easily write a script that searches for a name on Bing and boosts the Klout score. I know, you say that Microsoft can build something to detect fraud. Let’s say I believe you. If one is somewhat sophisticated, use a server farm or the cloud to do many searches at random times, from varying IP addresses. This is not that difficult and you better believe SEO firms will charge a fee to boost your Klout score just like you can pay for Twitter followers.